560 



CHAPTER III. 



Influence of Respiration on the Temperature and 

 Vital Energy of Animals. 



'< If errors had not been rooted in men's first notions, some 

 things justly discovered might have rectified others; but as 

 errors have been fundamental, and of such a kind that men have 

 rather neglected and passed things over, than formed a wrong or 

 false judgment about them, it is no wonder if they never attained 

 what they never had in view ; not arrived at the end they never 

 proposed ; nor performed the course which they never entered." 



BACON. 



IF ever the theory of Medicine be destined to 

 take its appropriate rank among the exact 

 sciences, it must be founded on precise and 

 enlarged views of the cause which governs all 

 the movements of nature, including those of 

 the animal economy. And there is abundant 

 reason to hope, that when the attention of man- 

 kind shall be once thoroughly aroused to the 

 importance of throwing off the paralyzing tram- 

 mels of authority, they will very soon be able 

 to dispel the numerous obscurities that have 

 hitherto retarded the progress of discovery. For 

 it is certain that if the cause of sanguification, 

 digestion, secretion, nutrition, sensation, and 

 muscular motion be derived from the air by 

 breathing, it must be a positive agent, subject to 



